Born from the foam where the severed parts of the sky-god fell into the sea
Hesiod's Theogony derives her name from aphros, foam; she came ashore at Cythera and Cyprus.
Myth · Greek
Aphrodite
Greek mythology — Olympian, goddess of love, beauty and desire
Aphrodite is the goddess of love, beauty and sexual desire, born in Hesiod's account from the sea foam that gathered round the severed genitals of Uranus. Married to the lame smith-god and notoriously unfaithful with the god of war, she is a dangerous as well as a delightful power: the promise she makes to Paris starts the Trojan War, and those who neglect her are destroyed. Her cult, strongest at Paphos on Cyprus and at Corinth, has clear roots in the Near Eastern Ishtar and Astarte.
How to spot them
- ▸Dove, sparrow, myrtle, rose and scallop shell; the magic girdle that compels desire
- ▸Born from the sea; epithets Cypris, Cytherea, Urania ('heavenly') and Pandemos ('of all the people')
- ▸Wife of Hephaestus, lover of Ares, mother of Eros and of Aeneas
- ▸The Knidian statue by Praxiteles and the Venus de Milo
Stories & episodes
Promised Paris the most beautiful woman in the world, and won the golden apple
The bribe was Helen, already married to Menelaus — hence the Trojan War.
Caught in bed with the war-god under a net of invisible chains
Her husband's trap, and the laughter of the gods, sung by Demodocus in Odyssey 8.
Loved a mortal hunter who was gored to death by a boar
From the blood of Adonis sprang the anemone; she shared him with the queen of the underworld.
Answered a sculptor's prayer by bringing his ivory statue to life
Pygmalion of Cyprus; the story behind Shaw's play and My Fair Lady.
Gave Hippomenes three golden apples to beat a fast-running huntress
Atalanta stooped for them and lost the race; the couple later offended the goddess and became lions.
Wounded in the hand by Diomedes while rescuing her son from the battlefield
She was carrying Aeneas clear when the mortal hero struck her, in Iliad 5.
Lent her embroidered girdle to Hera, who used it to seduce Zeus
The kestos himas, which made its wearer irresistible.
Quick-fire facts
- •Roman equivalent: Venus, ancestress of the Julian family through Aeneas, and the subject of Lucretius' opening invocation
- •Hesiod makes her born from the sea foam; Homer calls her the daughter of Zeus and Dione
- •Married to Hephaestus; mother of Eros (Cupid), Harmonia, Phobos, Deimos and, by Anchises, of Aeneas
- •Her son by Hermes, Hermaphroditus, merged with the nymph Salmacis and gave English a word
- •Praxiteles' Aphrodite of Knidos (c. 350 BC) was the first monumental female nude in Greek art; only Roman copies survive
- •The Venus de Milo, found on Melos in 1820, is in the Louvre; the Aphrodite of Knidos type and the Capitoline Venus are others
- •Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (c. 1485) shows her arriving on a scallop shell
- •The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite tells of her seduction of Anchises on Mount Ida
- •The planet Venus, the brightest object in the sky after the sun and moon, carries her Roman name, as does Friday in the Romance languages (French vendredi)
- •The word 'aphrodisiac' comes from her name, and 'venereal' from Venus
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Sources
- Aaron J. Atsma, the Theoi Project — Aphrodite
- Hesiod — Theogony The birth from the sea foam and the etymology of her name